Mobile UPI  |   About UPI  |   UPI en Español  |   UPI Arabic  |   UPIU  |   My Account
Search:
Go

Military museums seek relevance in new age

|
|
 
  
Published: May 25, 2008 at 7:30 PM

WASHINGTON, May 25 (UPI) -- Military museums across the United States are suffering this Memorial Day weekend as they try to compete with high-tech entertainment options, experts say.

Professionals in the field have long preferred solemnity and history lessons over entertainment values, and that is coming back to haunt many of the 90 such facilities in the United States, The Washington Post reported Sunday, citing the shopworn state of the National Museum of the United States Navy as an example.

There, it said, the faded dress coat of Adm. George Dewey and the chipped paint of an anti-aircraft gun stand in sharp contrast to the nearby National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va., which the newspaper says includes a sophisticated sound and light experience.

"Museum professionals no longer think of 'attraction' as a dirty word," Lin Ezell, director of the Marine Corps museum, told the Post. "The amusement parks, the Disneys, the Epcots have taken this to a high level of art and science."

Younger museum-goers want authenticity as well as flash, Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, told the newspaper.

"They don't want to stand on a fake battlefield," he said. "They want to stand on the real battlefield where soldiers bled and died."

Topics: George Dewey
© 2008 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

Order reprints
  
Join the conversation
Most Popular Collections
Notable deaths of 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee AmfAR Cinema Against AIDS gala
Indianapolis 500 Presidential Medal of Freedom Memorial Day around the nation
Additional Top News Stories
1 of 20
Singer Janelle Monae arrives at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards in Universal City, California
View Caption
Singer Janelle Monae arrives for the MTV Movie Awards at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Universal City, California. UPI/Jim Ruymen
fark
Man turns dead pet cat into remote-controlled helicopter, calls it art (w/WTF pics)
"Good News" clubs teach children in public schools the Biblical importance of killing all nonbelievers...
Five arrested in prostitution sting. Article lists their names, ages and distance from a church
Photoshop this power tower technician
Driving drunk and unlicensed, with a kid not even buckled let alone in a safety seat, en route to...
Man killed in Spencer fire. The lava lamps must have ignited the blacklight posters